


First, the Roses

by tangentiallyTJ



Category: The Hard Problem
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 05:24:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4335551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangentiallyTJ/pseuds/tangentiallyTJ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because Damien Molony was incredible as Spike in The Hard Problem, and because the character devolved into someone I couldn't stand, and because I got a writing prompt, this happened. Spike gets a chance to see beyond his narrow view of humanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First, the Roses

Spike reclined on the bed of their hotel suite with a glass of champagne and watched Lisa claim the space as her own. She wandered thoughtfully, sipping the champagne he’d poured for them as she delicately catalogued the room with her fingertips. She was tactile, a truth about herself she’d shared on their second date. Textures pleased and offended her, and she refused to tolerate offense. No velvets. No corduroy. None but the softest lace. No slippery artificial fabrics.

He’d already turned back the bedspread and tested the sheets - soft, rich cotton, they’d be fine - and run his hand over the cushioned headboard. It wouldn’t offend. They’d be able to make full use of the bed, later.

He sipped his champagne and recalled the moment Lisa had claimed him as her own, with a soft brush of her fingertips down his cheek and along the line of his jaw. It was quick, only a moment, done in full view of half-dozen members of the behavioral sciences department. His colleagues, who’d wagered he couldn’t get the ice queen to go out with him, had stared at the intimate gesture. None of them, including him, had recognized that she had simply been testing his texture to make sure he wouldn’t offend.

Spike was grateful for the silly wager that had forced him to notice Lisa in the first place. He would have passed her by otherwise. He’d already catalogued her as quiet, studious, unremarkable and unsociable. Once her finer points had been mentioned - great legs, pert breasts, firm, round ass - he’d reconsidered. Lingering outside her classroom, he’d heard her engaging students in an animated discussion, and her laugh had stayed with him.

She had been at the University five years by the time he’d arrived, and during those years she hadn’t gone out with anyone from the school. She’d turned down everyone, male and female, eligible and already attached, who had asked her. Lisa attended University functions alone and she left them alone. She engaged professionally but not personally, not even with those members of the administration who could advance her career if they chose. She became a unicorn, a prize to be won, and some people said she knew it and was more wary because of it.   

Spike had returned to academia after growing so disgusted with himself during a foray into a privately-funded think tank that he was nearly ready to believe the theory of fallen man. Lisa taught in the literature department and was known as an excellent mentor for her students. Their departments shared a floor in a large building, with offices and staff lounges on opposite ends and classroom use divided between them.

Another sip of champagne as Lisa drifted into the hotel suite’s bathroom to test the towels, and he drifted into memories.

**

He used the classic ‘request for proofreading of a paper to be submitted for publication’ ruse to introduce himself to her. She saw through it immediately.

He knocked on the open door to her office. “Hi, I”m just across the way. Behavioral science. Wondered if I could bother you for the use of your eyes. I’m rubbish at proofreading my own work.” He noticed her blue eyes as he spoke, and watched in hopes of seeing them warm to him as he gave her a charming smile. “My name’s Spencer,” he added. “My     friends call me Spike.”

Her eyes remained unimpressed. “Are your friends 12? Surely no grown-ups would make you keep a childhood nickname.”

“It’s more a commentary on my character,” he said defensively. “I drive straight for what I want.”

“A spike doesn’t drive itself. You’ve been misnamed.” Lisa was observational rather than insulting, and Spike found himself unsure how to answer. She spared him the need. “What do you want me to proofread?”

Spike handed her the paper and said he’d buy her dinner as a thank-you. Lisa just smiled knowingly and offered to return the paper within the week. She brought it back to him when he was relaxing in the behavioral sciences staff lounge with his new colleagues and a cup of mediocre coffee.

She walked into what was for her foreign territory with the same ease she walked across a classroom full of admiring students. “Hello, Spence, here it is. Very clean grammatically, but you knew that,” she said as she handed him back the paper. “I made a few comments on the last page. Something you might want to consider.”

He stood as Lisa spoke, noting she called him a name he’d never offered, and flipped to the back page to read her comments. She waited quietly in case he had a response.

_This paper is emblematic of your chosen nickname. You drive your point home using fact after fact, hammering your way to a conclusion you insist is inevitable. Your evidence is as clear as the ring of steel on steel, and your summation as sharp as the business end of a spike. And that’s what makes it weak._

_A spike has a very narrow range of influence. It goes straight in, affecting only those materials closest to it, and only through the act of destruction. A spike rends while joining. It is neither welcomed nor valued by those things it influences._

_The human mind is not a highway map. We don’t know all of its routes. By refusing to acknowledge and consider the unknown, by refusing to present your opinions as the well-researched educated guesses that they are, you are limiting your influence and your ability to convince others to agree with you. As long as you insist on being a spike, you will be only a tool in the hands of something stronger than yourself, in your case the theories you believe are true. And you will only have the power to split apart and bind together a small sector of people who already believe the same._

_You can do better than this._

Spike felt himself blush as he read. Lisa was right, the paper wasn’t designed to influence anyone but to assert his own place among the field of those who already believed as he did, that humans are simply the product of a string of evolutionary coincidences. He was running the safest course, rehashing standard truths into a new format while noting that recent research had proven nothing to counter those truths. When he reached the last line, he caught his breath. A direct challenge. And she was right; he could do better.

“I owe you more than dinner,” he said quietly.

“How about dinner and half of whatever you win from the assholes who bet you couldn’t get me to go out with you?” Her smile widened at the uncomfortable shifting and murmurs from the assholes who’d been called out.

“Deal,” Spike agreed, smiling back at her.

They set the restaurant and time to meet, and then Lisa reached out and brushed his face with her fingers. She nodded, satisfied with what she’d felt. “Nice. I’ll see you later, Spence.”

Dinner went well, although Lisa remained guarded and shared little personal information. She was just attentive enough to encourage Spike to talk about himself, and just flattering enough to make him believe she was interested in knowing him better.

By the time Spike walked Lisa to her car he had hopes of sharing more than just a meal with her. He leaned in for a kiss he intended to use to signal his interest and found himself taken over by her. As their lips met she pushed him back against the car, a hand in his hair and one on his chest, and invaded him with an open-mouthed kiss that literally took his breath away.

When she had enough of him, Lisa pushed away from his clinging hands, opened her car door, and got in without a word. She was already in reverse and beginning to back up by the time Spike got himself together enough to move away from her car. He went home alone and unsettled by the notion that he’d been on an audition instead of a date.

In the ensuing days, when his colleagues asked about his date, he replied that he enjoyed it and believed she did too, but that no plans had been made to see each other again. He didn’t mention the kiss or the fact that he couldn’t remember Lisa sharing anything important about herself. Her typical quiet reserve hid an aggressively passionate woman, and Spike wanted to meet that woman again. He wanted hours with her. He was smart enough to know the best way to get there was to protect the privacy Lisa valued.

**

His champagne glass was empty. Spike considered a refill but his recent past served as a warning; drunkenness had become a coping mechanism to help him hide from the emptiness of his life. It had also turned him into the horrible drunk nobody wanted to invite to the party for fear he’d offend all the women and puke in the plants. Spike set his glass on the bedside table and kicked off his shoes. They’d be in their room for a while. The conference didn’t officially start until dinner this evening.

Lisa smiled at him as she unpacked her suitcase and put her things in their assigned places. Spike could tell she liked the look of him stretched out on the bed. She’d join him soon, when she was ready. Everything happened at her pace.

Spike was used to pursuing his women, the predatory instinct kicking into sync with the drive to procreate. He was expert at culling his chosen victim from the herd and bringing her to ground. It was nerve-wracking, being on the other end of the chase; the wary waiting and wondering if or when he’d be pounced on. But the moment when her eyes turned from amused to predatory, when he knew he’d been chosen, was so exhilarating he was happy to play her game.

Of course, it didn’t hurt to set a few snares of his own, now that he knew her better.

The knock on their door was perfectly-timed. Lisa answered it and returned with a vase of roses. Not red, not pastel pink, but the dark rose color somewhere between that only roses have. Roses and Lisa’s delicate nipples.

He’d take one of the roses and trace the curves of her body like a painter with a brush, rose petals on a canvas of skin. He’d circle her breasts and pretend to color in her nipples while she shivered with delight. He’d tickle the soles of her feet and the backs of her knees; he’d trace her spine and twirl the rose blossom in her dimples; he’d touch her with roses in every place he’d touch her with his lips and his hands. But first, the roses.

Spike crossed the room as she set the vase on the counter near the sink and ubiquitous hotel room coffee maker. He smiled as he watched her stroke the petals. She was pleased. She was slightly flushed. Things were about to get interesting.   

Memories flashed through his mind. Roses had been the tip-off that Lisa wanted more than satisfying sex. Roses had been another challenge.

**

It was over a week after their dinner before Lisa approached him again. Spike was almost convinced he’d failed his audition by the time she found him in his office, this time debating the value of mapping the brains of lesser species as a bridge into the human mind. She knocked on the open door, eyes skirting past the other two men and settling on him. Three people in a small room were already plenty, but he waved her in, standing from behind his desk as he did.

“Hi Spence. Got a minute?” She was offhand as she walked around his guests, sprawled in the two guest chairs, and joined him on his side of the desk.

“Of course. What can I do for you?” Spike was pleased by her use of the name she’d chosen for him. Lisa was the only one who used it, and it felt to him that she was telling him she refused to let him limit himself. That he was more than a Spike.

“I’m in the mood to be entertained tonight, and I think you could be very entertaining.” Her inflection didn’t change. There was no overt sexuality in her tone or manner.

“I can be,” Spike agreed, mirroring her.

She handed him a slip of paper. “My address. Any time after 8. Bring roses, if you have a chance to pick some up on your way. Not many, they’re for play, not for show.”

She must have read hesitation as well as a question in his expression because she smiled and rested her hand on his cheek. Her thumb traced his lips before settling, and the woman who’d shown herself for the length of a kiss was suddenly revealed again. His colleagues straightened in their chairs and stared at her revelation. Jealousy and want were sharp in the close air.

Lisa ignored them, her predator’s eyes fixed on Spike. “You can have the thorns clipped. Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you. You’re too pretty for that.” She took a step closer as her hand slid around to the base of his neck and her fingers played with his hair. “The only whip you’ll find at my place is whipped cream.”

He managed an easy smile. “If we’re sticking to cliches, I should bring maraschino cherries.”

She chuckled, delighted. “You can if you like. You’ve already got the nuts.”

He laughed out loud at her coarse joke, so unlike her, and stepped into her until their bodies touched. “I’ll bring whatever you like.”

“Cherries are fine. But first, the roses.” Then she was gone.

At 8:15 that evening Spike was at Lisa’s front door. When he left twelve hours later Spike had the keys to unlock Lisa’s body. The brush of rose petals, the slip of silk, the weighty scrub of a natural sponge. And those things he carried on himself, the wet, open kiss, the sharp nibble, the slender, nimble fingers, the spike.

Lisa had learned to appreciate the spike. Spike had learned to appreciate how much more there was to sex than just the spike and its target.

Spike said nothing about their night. When his colleagues grilled him for details, for any scrap of information, he shook his head. “The lady likes her privacy,” was his only answer.

Two days later Lisa met him in the hall on the way to his first class. She handed him a cup of coffee from a coffee shop a few blocks off campus. “You complained about the swill in the staff lounge. Try this,” she said.

It was fresh-roasted heaven. Spike thanked her sincerely.

“You’re new to the area. Someone needs to show you around.”

“Are you volunteering?” He took another sip of paradise in a cup.

“I am. Interested?” She sipped her coffee. They agreed to meet for lunch. Although the rules were never spoken, it was understood that no public displays of affection were allowed. The lady liked her privacy. She’d given Spike’s colleagues just enough of a peek for them to imagine what they were missing. It was Lisa’s revenge against everyone who’d considered her a prize.

**

The rules were different here. For the duration of the conference Spike was Lisa’s trophy date. He was supposed to be charming and attentive, witty, intelligent without being combative, and protective enough run off unwanted attention. She’d laid out the ground rules and he’d readily accepted. She was a featured speaker. He had to be on his best behavior. Professor, not playboy. Spence, not Spike. In public.

In their room Lisa could enjoy spike and all the trimmings. Soft lace and smooth silk against her skin, and the rummage of his hands underneath; saliva and sweat in the creases of her body, the pressure of tongue, the hungry suckle of an open mouth. Hair gripped in her hands, breath hot against her ear, muscles flexed beneath her searching fingers. Warm water, scented soapy patterns, thick Egyptian cotton, a light massage.

And the spike, joining without rending, welcomed and valued for its influence. The spike that gave them both pleasure because he knew he could be more, could give her more, could enjoy her more, if he chose to be more than just a spike. The hammer blow became an avalanche, an earthquake.

Spike understood the reason for the roses. They taught him to stay the hammer. They taught him to see the whole of her. And when he lay on the bed and felt her paint him with rose-petal strokes, he learned to let her see the whole of him. They’d use the spike, let it carry them to the pleased exhaustion of a powerful climax. But first, the roses.

 

 

  
  
  
  



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